How car insurance ruling protects Good Samaritans

Bob Egelko

A car owner who uses a motor vehicle, their own or someone else's, is covered by insurance under California law for any resulting injuries. But what about a passerby who comes across a car accident, carries an injured passenger out of the vehicle, and in doing so, makes the injuries worse?

The passerby is covered for damages, a divided federal appeals court said Wednesday, because the law says "unloading" a car, with the driver's permission, is the same as using it.

The definition is "counterintuitive," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged, since "unloading an injured passenger is not the way most people use a car." But that's what the law says, the court concluded in a 2-1 ruling.

The case stems from a Los Angeles-area accident in October 2003, when Anthony Watson lost control of his car and hit a light pole, injuring Watson and his passenger, Alexandra Van Horn. Friends of theirs were following in a second car, and one of them, Lisa Torti, went to Watson's car and pulled Van Horn out, saying afterward she saw the vehicle smoking and feared it would explode.
In a lawsuit, Van Horn alleged Torti had grabbed her roughly in pulling her free, contributing to spinal injuries that left her permanently paralyzed.

One of Torti's insurers agreed to cover her and settled Van Horn's suit for $4 million, but Torti's and Watson's auto insurers both denied coverage, saying Torti was not "using" Watson's car when she removed Van Horn. The dispute among the insurance companies wound up in federal court.
In Wednesday's ruling, Judge Harry Pregerson said a 1984 California insurance law defines "use" of a motor vehicle as "operating, maintaining, loading or unloading" the vehicle.
The law applies to nonowners who use an insured vehicle with the owner's permission, Pregerson said - so it would not apply to a burglar who broke into a car, but would apply to Torti, whose actions had drawn no objection from Watson, the car's owner.
In dissent, Timothy Murphy, a visiting judge from the federal appeals court in Denver, said the law should be reasonably interpreted to apply only to someone who was actually using the vehicle, by traveling in it or unloading cargo.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @egelko